


And The Rest Is Rust and Stardust

by Anonymous



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Consensual Underage Sex, Dark Tony Stark, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, One Shot, Stream of Consciousness, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-14
Updated: 2018-01-14
Packaged: 2019-03-04 16:22:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13368561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Tony didn’t usually pay attention to pretty boys.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Deutsch available: [Zurück bleibt Rost und Sternenstaub](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17214197) by Anonymous 



> Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction and nothing portrayed within is reflective of my real-life opinions or attitudes.

17)  
Because Lolita was not a seduction but the story of a rape; and Tony doesn’t think he’s any better, not when he’s lying in this bed full of his guilt and sin. Most of all though he knows he does not deserve to be saved. 

 

1)  
Tony didn’t usually pay attention to pretty boys. He’d had his college flings, after all, who hadn’t? But he liked women mostly and as he grew older and ventured further and further into the spotlight it became easier to brush aside his bisexual leanings to save face. After all his reckless playboy ways may have been perfect trashy tabloid fodder but still forgivable as long as his hookups were all heterosexual. Sad fact of the world was still that ongoing drunken lasciviousness was a scandalous but forgivable offense as long as you weren’t a ‘faggot.’ The echo of Howard’s long-dead homophobic voice in the back of his head might have had something to do with it too, but whatever. Everyone knew Tony Stark had daddy issues. 

So no, Tony didn’t go out of his way to notice pretty boys. He didn’t spend time thinking about their long legs and smooth thighs, perfect to fuck between, or their broad shoulders and clean lines of their backs. He didn’t think of stubbly kisses or wide, strong hands on his face, in his hair, against this throat. He didn’t dream about coiled strength and power over him, pinning him, keeping him down. Why would he when he’d had a worlds worth of supermodels and other beautiful women at his beck and call? And after that was Pepper, and he’d had eyes for no other until they were no longer Pepper-and-Tony anymore. And if he’d had a bit of a dry spell after that breakup, well he was a busy man, what with Stark Industries and superheroing and then the Accords had dropped and everything had gone to shit and afterward, god in the aftermath of that he’d been alone.; truly alone for the first time in a long time.

Well, except for the boy.

 

8)  
The answer to that is yes, always always yes.

 

2)  
Tony hadn’t really thought much about the boy beyond his usefulness the first time that they’d met. He’d been rather preoccupied with his world going slowly to hell all around him and even the legendary Tony Stark libido knew when to Knock That Shit Off. After that he was busy putting himself back together and picking up the pieces so he’d handed the kid off to Happy for management. Which in retrospect was a Bad Idea of colossal proportions; mostly because the damn kid was about 98% more exuberance than good sense. They were all collectively lucky that the brat hadn’t needed to be scraped up off that beach into a bucket. Tony wasn’t a dumb man. He knew that taking back the reigns from Happy after that was mostly his own guilt complex in action but by god the one time he’d tried to set boundaries and taken the suit the kid had wound up clinging to a plane so obviously better oversight and less pseudo-parental bullshit was required. Which suited Tony just fine. He’d never been anything close to parent material a day in his life, but eccentric rich mentor/buddy? That he could do.

Probably.

Maybe.

If he ignored the little voice that told him it was only going to end in disaster. 

 

13)  
“Because sometimes I think you see me; that you’re the only one who does, when the rest of the world is busy looking right through me.”

 

9)  
Time passes, days fly by in radio silence. Tony holds his breath like it’ll hold back the breaking storm if he does, but he runs out of air a thousand times over and the storm never comes. Peter also doesn’t come to visit, doesn’t text, doesn’t call, for weeks, and Tony feels as lucky as he does bereft. He sends one text, and only one, two months after. 

‘I want you. Nothing is ok without you.’

He’s said too much, even though he feels like he’s said nothing at all.

 

3)  
Avengers HQ was now Stark Industries HQ, mostly because the only Avenger still in residence was Tony himself. Pepper had her own place nearby, commuting for business, as did Happy. Between the break up and the long term effects of the minor brain trauma after his coma, both Pepper and Happy found dealing with Tony easier from a slight distance. Not that he blamed either of them. Likewise, Rhodey had gone home to the parents while he healed; even the best tech and physiotherapy could only do so much so fast. He’d be back on his feet but until then they both did better without the weight of their mistakes and regrets staring each other in the face. Vision was set up in DC as permanent Avengers liaison to the Accords council, which suited both him and Tony fine. The ghost of Jarvis was an ugly spectre between them so like the rest he’d within to minimum safe distance. Sometimes Tony felt like a bomb ticking down, counting backwards to explosion. 

 

10)  
Tony wakes suddenly, like the eyes on him had physical weight. He’s upright in bed and a command to summon the armour on his lips when a familiar hand clapped onto his mouth. He follows the line of the forearm up to the shoulder and then the face, Peter’s eyes narrowed and lips pursed. 

“Did you mean it?” He says, not moving his hand but not threatening Tony either. Not that the lack of threat encouraged him to relax at all. “When you said you wanted me, that nothing was the same without me, did you mean it?” 

And oh, the boy looks unsure, angry and hurt and floundering. But he moves his hand when Tony nods, like a positive response was the key to undoing this.

“Why?” And why indeed? Because Peter was attractive? Because Tony was lonely? Because he was a flawed, hopeless, helpless man? Yes, yes, and yes. 

“Because you are beautiful, and I need you.” The honesty scrapes him raw, but the boys eyes soften, and this time the kiss, is timid, sweet.

 

14)  
Because I am weak, he doesn’t say again. Because you are beautiful. Because I’m a gorgeous fucked up catastrophe. Because sometimes I want to ruin things that are perfect. Because I am not perfect. Because I am deeply flawed. Because you made me feel human. Because you yourself are so very undeniably human. Because you are good. Because I am goddamn lonely.

Because I am weak.

Because I am wrong. 

Because I am weak.

“Mr. Stark, do you love me?”

 

6)  
Tony was a man of odd discipline; his strength of will came to him sparingly. For instance, his ability to resist torture was incredible, but the ability to resist temptation was almost nonexistent. He’d like to say that he was a much more honorable man, but honor and he had always had a strange alliance. So he ignored his newfound obsession as best and long as he could. A better man might have sent the boy away, or arranged for supervision or anything at all really. But Tony’s betterness was spread pretty thin lately and when the time came for it to fail, it failed spectacularly. 

 

4)  
The only exception was the kid, who seemed almost ever-present. Seriously issue one open-door invitation and the teenager had practically moved in. It felt like everywhere Tony was the kid turned up shortly after, slouching about in his second-hand jeans and punny science shirts, babbling a mile a minute and nearly bouncing with untamed energy. Tony knew he grumped a lot about it, but it was mostly good-natured and Peter knew it. Truly it was hard to muster up any frustration when the boy had a way of filling out all the ugly empty spaces. The living quarters may have otherwise been a ghost town but Peter had a way of lighting up a room, yanking back the veil of silence and stillness and filling it with light and life. He echoed in Tony’s head the same way; vivid and unforgettable, smoothing out sharp edges and wicked corners until it was hard to imagine being without him. It was easier to put the booze down and remember to sleep or to eat or occasionally just be a fucking normal human being with those soft brown eyes holding him accountable. Christ, and Tony had never meant to get so attached. How long anyway before the kid got tired of him and moved on? How long before he fucked this up too? 

‘Oh,’ Tony had thought the first time the boy had stretched and his shirt had rode up, displaying a sliver of skin below his navel that Tony had suddenly been unable to ignore; ‘not long at all.’

 

11)  
The boy kisses clumsy, too much enthusiasm without experience. Tony loves it. He loves the too-rough hands in his hair and the nip of too much teeth. He loves it more when the boy drags his sleep shirt off, staring through his soul in the dark and tracing the scars on his chest with light fingers. Tony has never felt so reckless before, primed and ready for the sweetest of sins. Gentle fingertips on the drawstrings of his pants and with a shimmy he’s naked. It takes only second for the boy to shed the suit too, like peeling back a second skin to show the sinew and marrow beneath. He nearly trips in his scramble to mount the bed and Tony laughs low before he’s kissed again. They rock together like the bed is an ocean, holding each other and swaying as they rut. The boy curses when he comes, the expletive sharp between them, louder than Tony’s quiet blasphemy as he does the same. There is a moment after where Tony expects him to run, but he stays, naked and sticky and satisfied adrift in the sea of sheets.

 

15)  
Oh god help him, this boy will be his bitter, ugly end.

 

5)  
So the thing is it’s been a while, right? Tony may have gone wild in his heyday but lately it’d been all work and no play, and after a taste of the long-term with Pepper, well showing your scars to a bunch of strangers just for a quick fuck didn’t seem half as appealing. If someone had told Tony years ago that he’d grow weary of all the empty, anonymous lustful eyes on him he’d have laughed. But here he was staring fifty in the face and feeling every one of his years; exhausted and underappreciated and overwhelmed all at once. Sometimes it felt like the more he scooped out and handed the world the less that he had left for himself, like the arc reactor had left a hole that never healed. 

He was lonely, is what it was. Lonely and alone and misunderstood and fearful and that’s the only reason that he was having a hard time thinking about anything other than the way the hair curled on the back of Peter’s neck, or the sound of his laughter, or the grace of his long fingers, or the narrowness of his waist and slender hips, or the high pale arches of his feet the one time Tony had seen him barefoot, or the whiteness of his even teeth, or the way he was somehow both shy and full of sass, naive and also wise, silly and yet full of measured gravitas. 

Nearly-fifty year old men don’t do stupid kindergarten crushes on a boy a third of their age. So whatever Tony was doing was obviously a magnitude more serious than that; and with the dread of a doctor categorizing his symptoms and realizing the disease was fatal, he knew that this might be the mistake that destroyed him. 

 

12)  
“Do you always sleep with teenage boys?”

“Never. Not since I was one, too.”

“What makes me special?”

And what, indeed. 

 

7)  
Tony has one moment to enjoy the site of the boy, lips swollen and kiss-ravaged, eyes wet, hair mussed and pressed to the edge of Tony’s desk before he bolts, fleeing to the nearest window and away, leaving behind the imprint of his slim hips in Tony’s hands, his taste in Tony’s mouth and his heat a sense memory under Tony’s skin. 

Tony should have known better, and as he waits for Peter to spill the beans and tear everything he’s built right the fuck down, Tony wonders if it’s worth it.

 

16)  
So he lies and yet very much does not lie at all, and that’s the rub, isn’t it?

“Only you kid. Only and always you.”

 

18)  
“My car is limping, Dolores Haze,  
And the last long lap is the hardest,  
And I shall be dumped where the weed decays,  
And the rest is rust and stardust.”  
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> linear version for easy reading

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction and nothing portrayed within is reflective of my real-life opinions or attitudes.

1)  
Tony didn’t usually pay attention to pretty boys. He’d had his college flings, after all, who hadn’t? But he liked women mostly and as he grew older and ventured further and further into the spotlight it became easier to brush aside his bisexual leanings to save face. After all his reckless playboy ways may have been perfect trashy tabloid fodder but still forgivable as long as his hookups were all heterosexual. Sad fact of the world was still that ongoing drunken lasciviousness was a scandalous but forgivable offense as long as you weren’t a ‘faggot.’ The echo of Howard’s long-dead homophobic voice in the back of his head might have had something to do with it too, but whatever. Everyone knew Tony Stark had daddy issues. 

So no, Tony didn’t go out of his way to notice pretty boys. He didn’t spend time thinking about their long legs and smooth thighs, perfect to fuck between, or their broad shoulders and clean lines of their backs. He didn’t think of stubbly kisses or wide, strong hands on his face, in his hair, against this throat. He didn’t dream about coiled strength and power over him, pinning him, keeping him down. Why would he when he’d had a worlds worth of supermodels and other beautiful women at his beck and call? And after that was Pepper, and he’d had eyes for no other until they were no longer Pepper-and-Tony anymore. And if he’d had a bit of a dry spell after that breakup, well he was a busy man, what with Stark Industries and superheroing and then the Accords had dropped and everything had gone to shit and afterward, god in the aftermath of that he’d been alone.; truly alone for the first time in a long time.

Well, except for the boy.

 

2)  
Tony hadn’t really thought much about the boy beyond his usefulness the first time that they’d met. He’d been rather preoccupied with his world going slowly to hell all around him and even the legendary Tony Stark libido knew when to Knock That Shit Off. After that he was busy putting himself back together and picking up the pieces so he’d handed the kid off to Happy for management. Which in retrospect was a Bad Idea of colossal proportions; mostly because the damn kid was about 98% more exuberance than good sense. They were all collectively lucky that the brat hadn’t needed to be scraped up off that beach into a bucket. Tony wasn’t a dumb man. He knew that taking back the reigns from Happy after that was mostly his own guilt complex in action but by god the one time he’d tried to set boundaries and taken the suit the kid had wound up clinging to a plane so obviously better oversight and less pseudo-parental bullshit was required. Which suited Tony just fine. He’d never been anything close to parent material a day in his life, but eccentric rich mentor/buddy? That he could do.

Probably.

Maybe.

If he ignored the little voice that told him it was only going to end in disaster. 

 

3)  
Avengers HQ was now Stark Industries HQ, mostly because the only Avenger still in residence was Tony himself. Pepper had her own place nearby, commuting for business, as did Happy. Between the break up and the long term effects of the minor brain trauma after his coma, both Pepper and Happy found dealing with Tony easier from a slight distance. Not that he blamed either of them. Likewise, Rhodey had gone home to the parents while he healed; even the best tech and physiotherapy could only do so much so fast. He’d be back on his feet but until then they both did better without the weight of their mistakes and regrets staring each other in the face. Vision was set up in DC as permanent Avengers liaison to the Accords council, which suited both him and Tony fine. The ghost of Jarvis was an ugly spectre between them so like the rest he’d within to minimum safe distance. Sometimes Tony felt like a bomb ticking down, counting backwards to explosion. 

 

4)  
The only exception was the kid, who seemed almost ever-present. Seriously issue one open-door invitation and the teenager had practically moved in. It felt like everywhere Tony was the kid turned up shortly after, slouching about in his second-hand jeans and punny science shirts, babbling a mile a minute and nearly bouncing with untamed energy. Tony knew he grumped a lot about it, but it was mostly good-natured and Peter knew it. Truly it was hard to muster up any frustration when the boy had a way of filling out all the ugly empty spaces. The living quarters may have otherwise been a ghost town but Peter had a way of lighting up a room, yanking back the veil of silence and stillness and filling it with light and life. He echoed in Tony’s head the same way; vivid and unforgettable, smoothing out sharp edges and wicked corners until it was hard to imagine being without him. It was easier to put the booze down and remember to sleep or to eat or occasionally just be a fucking normal human being with those soft brown eyes holding him accountable. Christ, and Tony had never meant to get so attached. How long anyway before the kid got tired of him and moved on? How long before he fucked this up too? 

‘Oh,’ Tony had thought the first time the boy had stretched and his shirt had rode up, displaying a sliver of skin below his navel that Tony had suddenly been unable to ignore; ‘not long at all.’

 

5)  
So the thing is it’s been a while, right? Tony may have gone wild in his heyday but lately it’d been all work and no play, and after a taste of the long-term with Pepper, well showing your scars to a bunch of strangers just for a quick fuck didn’t seem half as appealing. If someone had told Tony years ago that he’d grow weary of all the empty, anonymous lustful eyes on him he’d have laughed. But here he was staring fifty in the face and feeling every one of his years; exhausted and underappreciated and overwhelmed all at once. Sometimes it felt like the more he scooped out and handed the world the less that he had left for himself, like the arc reactor had left a hole that never healed. 

He was lonely, is what it was. Lonely and alone and misunderstood and fearful and that’s the only reason that he was having a hard time thinking about anything other than the way the hair curled on the back of Peter’s neck, or the sound of his laughter, or the grace of his long fingers, or the narrowness of his waist and slender hips, or the high pale arches of his feet the one time Tony had seen him barefoot, or the whiteness of his even teeth, or the way he was somehow both shy and full of sass, naive and also wise, silly and yet full of measured gravitas. 

Nearly-fifty year old men don’t do stupid kindergarten crushes on a boy a third of their age. So whatever Tony was doing was obviously a magnitude more serious than that; and with the dread of a doctor categorizing his symptoms and realizing the disease was fatal, he knew that this might be the mistake that destroyed him. 

 

6)  
Tony was a man of odd discipline; his strength of will came to him sparingly. For instance, his ability to resist torture was incredible, but the ability to resist temptation was almost nonexistent. He’d like to say that he was a much more honorable man, but honor and he had always had a strange alliance. So he ignored his newfound obsession as best and long as he could. A better man might have sent the boy away, or arranged for supervision or anything at all really. But Tony’s betterness was spread pretty thin lately and when the time came for it to fail, it failed spectacularly. 

 

7)  
Tony has one moment to enjoy the site of the boy, lips swollen and kiss-ravaged, eyes wet, hair mussed and pressed to the edge of Tony’s desk before he bolts, fleeing to the nearest window and away, leaving behind the imprint of his slim hips in Tony’s hands, his taste in Tony’s mouth and his heat a sense memory under Tony’s skin. 

Tony should have known better, and as he waits for Peter to spill the beans and tear everything he’s built right the fuck down, Tony wonders if it’s worth it.

 

8)  
The answer to that is yes, always always yes.

 

9)  
Time passes, days fly by in radio silence. Tony holds his breath like it’ll hold back the breaking storm if he does, but he runs out of air a thousand times over and the storm never comes. Peter also doesn’t come to visit, doesn’t text, doesn’t call, for weeks, and Tony feels as lucky as he does bereft. He sends one text, and only one, two months after. 

‘I want you. Nothing is ok without you.’

He’s said too much, even though he feels like he’s said nothing at all.

 

10)  
Tony wakes suddenly, like the eyes on him had physical weight. He’s upright in bed and a command to summon the armour on his lips when a familiar hand clapped onto his mouth. He follows the line of the forearm up to the shoulder and then the face, Peter’s eyes narrowed and lips pursed. 

“Did you mean it?” He says, not moving his hand but not threatening Tony either. Not that the lack of threat encouraged him to relax at all. “When you said you wanted me, that nothing was the same without me, did you mean it?” 

And oh, the boy looks unsure, angry and hurt and floundering. But he moves his hand when Tony nods, like a positive response was the key to undoing this.

“Why?” And why indeed? Because Peter was attractive? Because Tony was lonely? Because he was a flawed, hopeless, helpless man? Yes, yes, and yes. 

“Because you are beautiful, and I need you.” The honesty scrapes him raw, but the boys eyes soften, and this time the kiss, is timid, sweet.

 

11)  
The boy kisses clumsy, too much enthusiasm without experience. Tony loves it. He loves the too-rough hands in his hair and the nip of too much teeth. He loves it more when the boy drags his sleep shirt off, staring through his soul in the dark and tracing the scars on his chest with light fingers. Tony has never felt so reckless before, primed and ready for the sweetest of sins. Gentle fingertips on the drawstrings of his pants and with a shimmy he’s naked. It takes only second for the boy to shed the suit too, like peeling back a second skin to show the sinew and marrow beneath. He nearly trips in his scramble to mount the bed and Tony laughs low before he’s kissed again. They rock together like the bed is an ocean, holding each other and swaying as they rut. The boy curses when he comes, the expletive sharp between them, louder than Tony’s quiet blasphemy as he does the same. There is a moment after where Tony expects him to run, but he stays, naked and sticky and satisfied adrift in the sea of sheets.

 

12)  
“Do you always sleep with teenage boys?”

“Never. Not since I was one, too.”

“What makes me special?”

And what, indeed. 

 

13)  
“Because sometimes I think you see me; that you’re the only one who does, when the rest of the world is busy looking right through me.”

 

14)  
Because I am weak, he doesn’t say again. Because you are beautiful. Because I’m a gorgeous fucked up catastrophe. Because sometimes I want to ruin things that are perfect. Because I am not perfect. Because I am deeply flawed. Because you made me feel human. Because you yourself are so very undeniably human. Because you are good. Because I am goddamn lonely.

Because I am weak.

Because I am wrong. 

Because I am weak.

“Mr. Stark, do you love me?”

 

15)  
Oh god help him, this boy will be his bitter, ugly end.

 

16)  
So he lies and yet very much does not lie at all, and that’s the rub, isn’t it?

“Only you kid. Only and always you.”

 

17)  
Because Lolita was not a seduction but the story of a rape; and Tony doesn’t think he’s any better, not when he’s lying in this bed full of his guilt and sin. Most of all though he knows he does not deserve to be saved. 

 

18)  
“My car is limping, Dolores Haze,  
And the last long lap is the hardest,  
And I shall be dumped where the weed decays,  
And the rest is rust and stardust.”  
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The last long lap is the hardest](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17421038) by Anonymous 




End file.
